“Yes, her. I think she’s hot”.
I was 11-years-old in a primary school IT class, listening to my crush talking about the type of girl he finds attractive. His friend had showed him a picture of a girl who looked like the quintessential media archetype of beauty. Slim, blonde, straight hair, white. My heart sank upon realising that she looked nothing like me.
This happened again with a boy I liked in secondary school, and the next boy after that. I was finding people attractive who were not experiencing the same feelings towards me. My first experiences of dating as a non-white woman were, for want of a better word, challenging.
This was hardly surprising given the media landscape during this time, with the white standard of beauty continuously pushed in the media.
A 2005 study of 620 teen beauty magazines by Micaela Choo Banks found that, of the 1,559 models featured, there were 1,011 white models and 548 minority models. Furthermore, the white standard of beauty was prominent even amongst minority models, with 38% of minority models in advertisements conforming to the white standard of beauty – light skin, straight hair and thin body. Even in 2023, this particular type of beauty still reigns supreme in popular culture and the media. If you do not conform to this, you can easily feel inadequate; just as I did.
Fast-forward to 18-years-old, and I’m falling in love for the first time. He’s white, privately-educated and from a town with very little ethnic diversity. We both attended one of the most diverse universities in the country, and he said repeatedly that he found me attractive, both intellectually and sexually. It couldn’t have been going better. Until he told his best friend, who simply could not comprehend it.
I won’t go into everything he said, but much of his opinion centred around his underlying racist beliefs that girls who were not white were less attractive than white girls. He told his friend repeatedly that he did not think I was attractive and that he could do better than me. In the end, his opinions placed too much grief and doubt upon the relationship on both sides and it ended. It took me a very long time to get over it.
Watching Sammy say that he doubted Scott’s sexual attraction towards Catherine on Love Island brought all of those memories back
So did watching Tyrique say that he thought Scott’s feelings for Catherine were exaggerated, a few episodes later.
I knew exactly why Catherine cried, and the pain behind the words she was trying to get across to Sammy in the aftermath of the first incident.
We all see beauty differently, but I and many others on social media think that Catherine is one of the most beautiful girls in the villa. Not to mention her calm, fun-loving personality and adversity towards causing drama. Scott has repeatedly expressed his attraction towards her, both with words and physical gestures. They cuddled in bed on the first night and have romantic conversations. Scott’s attraction is obvious in the way that he looks at Catherine. Yes, Sammy was right that Scott wanted to get to know the slim, blonde bombshell Leah as well as Catherine, but that did not mean that he could not find both girls attractive.
Sammy dealt a further blow to Catherine in the episode preceding the infamous Casa Amor, where he referenced Scott’s previous interest in Leah and Kady, saying that it was strange that Scott stopped pursuing both girls to fully invest in getting to know Catherine.
Why is it so hard to believe that Scott genuinely likes Catherine more than any other girl in the villa? Mitch was not questioned as intensely for being willing to close himself off from other girls to get to know Molly after less than a week. Neither were the white couples who gotten and stayed together in the first few weeks of Love Island in previous series, such as Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies, Nathan Massey and Cara De La Hoyde and Jack Finch and Dani Dyer. What was so different about Scott and Catherine?
The answer is obvious but unspoken
It’s the disbelief around how, out of all the girls in the villa, Scott, a white men, is most attracted to Catherine, a black woman.
This was especially evident in Tyrique and Sammy’s confusion about why Scott had chosen Catherine over Kady and Leah, two of the white bombshells. Catherine is clearly an incredibly beautiful girl, as are Kady and Leah. There have been several incidents on Love Island where someone has taken an interest in a bombshell briefly, but immediately returned to getting to know their initial partner more. The reasons that Tyrique gave for questioning Scott’s feelings for Catherine included Scott’s frequent declaration of his feelings and disinterest in pursuing the bombshells. Aren’t these just a mark of a genuine man? The bombshells barely turned Tyrique’s head, even when Leah chose him to couple up with, yet he was not accused of playing a game by primarily pursuing Ella. And what about Sammy, who has openly said that Jess is not his usual type, but continues to get to know her? Why has he not been called out for playing a game?
Love Island has done well to secure a diverse range of contestants. However, representation should not be where the show’s diversity ends. There is no point in having beautiful black women on the show if they are going to have their attractiveness and desirability questioned. Catherine’s self-esteem and mental health could easily be eroded by the coded racism of the boys in the villa. Love Island must do better and not reinforce the idea that this type of attraction is surprising and doubtful, or risk jeopardising the welfare of its non-white contestants.
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Written by Sarina Kiayani
Illustrated by Francesca Mariama
